


An Attempt At Catching Up

by mamie_eisenhower



Category: Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:27:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28012422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamie_eisenhower/pseuds/mamie_eisenhower
Summary: Coming out is a process that doesn't end when you publish an op-ed.
Relationships: Chasten Buttigieg/Pete Buttigieg
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	An Attempt At Catching Up

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing like projecting your own Gay Trauma (TM) on the winner of the 2020 Iowa Caucuses. What a time we live in.

**An Attempt At Catching Up**

**  
** **Friday, January 22** **nd** **, 2016**

**South Bend**

They’d had sex earlier that evening -- in fact, Chasten was pretty sure the engine of the grey Kia he’d rented to drive from Chicago was still hot to the touch by the time Pete, freshly showered, had held him pinned down on his duvet. He’d peppered his face, then neck, with kisses while fitting his own body atop. His lips, winter-dry and soft, had opened a bit faster than usual, and his breathing had been a little heavier. 

Later -- after they’d stripped; after they’d made out, pressed naked against each other as the sky outside the window turned into a square piece of velvet stitched with telephone wires; after they’d let themselves fall back onto the mattress, Chasten working one, two, three fingers into him to what he thought might be the beating of his own heart in his ears; later, the words he murmured, growled, into Chasten’s nape were a little more urgent and just a little more daring. Chasten didn’t ask. He was glad Pete was gaining confidence. He, too, was regaining his own.

They’d had sex earlier. It had been nice. So had the beer and the pizza and the movie and the chatting. Now they were too worn-out from the evening and the work week to go off to the races for a second round. This was nice, too, just laying in bed and listening to each other’s warm breathing, his own head heavy with drowsiness already, Pete’s resting on his chest just as heavily. 

Suddenly, he noticed Pete’s breathing had shallowed a bit. He looked down. Pete’s expression was staid as ever, but his eyes with the pupils as wide and as dark as a January night were open, focused on a distant point. Chasten was not quite sure if it lay in this world. Pete was not a fussy sleeper usually -- to the contrary, often to Chasten’s amusement. Something had to be keeping him up. 

He softly stroked his arm, took his hand in his own two. Pete didn’t flinch. “Babe,” he whispered, “I can hear the gears grinding. Penny for your thoughts?”

Pete shifted, as if to shake something off, and lifted Chasten’s hand to kiss his knuckles. “I’ll hold you to it, start a piggy bank maybe,” he said, but didn’t go on. 

Chasten didn’t want to pry. He knew there were some late-night thoughts of his own that he wouldn’t share, either. He’d almost managed to drift off when Pete spoke again, strangely timid for someone who, yes, was an introvert, but usually knew what he’d say. Almost inaudibly.

“I chatted on the phone this afternoon with someone I went to Afghanistan with. He called me.”

Chasten clenched up. He still didn’t entirely know what to make of the fact that his boyfriend had served in a warzone just a couple of months before they’d met. The thought of a missed connection was strange enough; the thought that they might not have happened on account of Pete not returning could sear his bones if he pondered it too long. And this call -- it had conveyed bad news, hadn’t it?

“Did something happen?” he asked, not trying to mask his anxiety.

“Nothing bad. He’s just going through South Bend for work in two weeks and asked if we could have lunch.”

A beat passed.

“Really, it’s strange it affects me so much. This doesn’t usually happen --”

“Peter,” Chasten said, softly, “no matter what it is, I promise you don’t have to justify why you care.”

Pete nodded into the fabric of Chasten’s T-shirt. “Well, we were just chatting about the last year, and he’d asked where I’d spent Christmas, and I said I’d been with you and your parents. Up in Michigan.” Suddenly, his voice sounded a little desperate. “You’ve got to know, Chasten, that this guy is younger than I am, went to college, I’d wager he votes Democratic if I had to place a bet -- he’s one of the guys who sent me an email, one of the seemingly innocuous ones just catching up, after I came out.”

“Sounds like an alright guy,” Chasten replied, rather anodyne. Where was Pete going with this? What did he need to know this guy’s biography for?

“And he is, he really is, I think. Well, anyways -- I said we spent Christmas with your folks, large family affair, described the whole thing. And he kind of went quiet after that. The air was completely out of the conversation. And this, mind you, was someone I’d see almost daily in Kabul. -- I guess the email really  _ was  _ just an attempt at catching up.”

Chasten inhaled. Images of conversations he’d had with classmates of his from years ago, after he’d come out himself -- stilted, sometimes openly hostile -- drifted by his inner eye like a series of stained glass windows. “So are you meeting up for lunch, then?”

“I think so.”

“And you were turning that over in your head all day.” It was a statement, if a tentative one, not a question. 

“Not exactly.” 

That surprised him. 

“People are people, and maybe, we’ll be fine in the end. By God, he’s not the only one who didn’t react well. But what really got me was how similar we really are, he and I -- similar age, both went to good schools. Similar interests, even. Similar self-perception --”

Chasten dragged a soothing thumb over Pete’s hand. Perhaps he was soothing himself.

“The thing is, Chasten, I saw myself in him. And that scared me."

“You saw yourself if you were straight? You think you’d be a bigot dudebro? And here I thought I was the one with the self-esteem issues.”

Pete gave a huff at his self-deprecation, but when he continued, his tone was dead serious, pleading even. “I wouldn’t show how uncomfortable I am, that I don’t think I would.” He swallowed dry. “And I don’t mean a straight version of me. I mean me-me, gay me, just a couple of years ago."

Chasten’s breath caught, but he continued to stroke his hand. “Internalized homophobia --,” he said, attempting to sound nonchalant even though the thought filled his throat with lead-cast beads of dread. This wouldn’t be a break-up, would it? No. No. Everything else, but not that. “ -- it happens to many people. It’s the worst.”

“Last week I went for after-work drinks with some of my team and a lesbian couple kissed at the table next to us. Pretty passionately, I might say.” He gave a hesitant chuckle. “Good for them ... but I’m telling you -- the way my brain froze for a second -- it felt like a fight-or-flight kind of situation. Like somebody would pin me down any moment and read my expression like a book and listen to my thoughts and know I’m gay, too.”

“But you are gay.” Chasten could hear the water in his own laugh.

“I am. And I’m out. And I’m so, so glad that I’m gay and I’m out and I’m with you, love.”

Wordlessly, Chasten kissed the crown of his head. He smelled like runner’s shampoo and security. They pressed closer into each other. After a moment had passed, Chasten opened his mouth. His voice sounded gravelly, uncharacteristically so, a surprise to himself. “It takes time, love. It’s alright. You’re going to get there. You’ve been in the closet for almost all of your life --”

“Seems like the lofty winds of freedom still cut my lungs a bit.”

This time, Chasten belted out a laugh that was sincere. “You know, you are the only person in the world who’d express it in those words -- I guess you are right, babe. They do. Still, you can’t deny you’re a nerd.”

“You love me for it.”

“I really do, don’t I?” The word was still new enough between them to fill him with a giddy, golden warmth. Suddenly, he scooted down and twisted his body so he and Pete came to lay face to face.

“You know,” he said, animated at once, “while I’m sure you read Baldwin and Whitman and Wilde and whatnot when you were coming to terms with yourself, I used to go to the internet cafe in the town I stayed in when I was in Germany and look up Wikipedia pages of people I knew were queer. And act as if I was interested in their professional accomplishments, acted to myself and anyone who might have watched me.” He let his voice lower conspiratorially: “And kind of scroll down to the personal section, and silently read the part about their love life again and again. Until it had stopped making me feel weird and gave me the fuzzies instead. Or at least felt like it wasn’t a  _ thing  _ anymore. And I’d do that for as long as my can of coke lasted.”

Pete’s glazed-over eyes crinkled at the edges. “What a picture you paint,” he said, and met him in a kiss, chaste and minty from the toothpaste. Then added, a bit mischievously: “I used to do pretty much the same thing.”

“Peter,” Chasten said, and gripped his biceps, to stop his own fingers from trembling, “one day yours is going to be one of those Wikipedia pages for some kid peeking around the closet door.”

At that, his boyfriend -- boyfriend! -- crawled closer, until they could feel each other’s chests and bellies lifting with each breath through the thin cotton of their t-shirts. Between kisses to his shoulder, each delicate like the tiniest speck of hoar on a blade of grass, Pete replied: “Just don’t jinx it, love.”

Together, they’d have time to practice being gay, lots and lots of time. Lots of quiet nights like this. Chasten knew they would.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everybody who's had conversations like this with me. Leave your own prompts in the comments, if you have any -- I need something to distract myself from uni.  
> \---  
> If you are interested in learning about internalized homophobia, either as someone dealing with it or as a straight ally, feel very free to check out this comprehensive 2009 study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2678796/ If you're not a data person, just jump to "Discussion".


End file.
